Kit

So we won.

England supporters, bless them, still looked like a jumble sale – but at least this time they were winning while doing it. The Women’s Euros final ended with England beating Spain, yet the crowd in the stands still looked like someone had tipped over the lost property bin at Wembley. Red here, white there, and – bafflingly – the occasional Union Flag cape, as if we’d annexed Wales and Scotland for the day and they just hadn’t been told yet.

The kit doesn’t help. Red, white and blue. Which, let’s be honest, isn’t England’s colour at all – it’s Great Britain’s. So while the players were hammering in goals, they were also looking like they’d stepped off a commemorative Jubilee plate, while somewhere in Edinburgh and Cardiff, entire pubs groaned every time we scored.

Then there's the Three Lions. On the England home kit, the famous Three Lions aren’t the traditional gold-on-red seen in heraldry – they’re royal blue, set on a crisp white shield trimmed with red roses and edged in blue. It’s a modern reworking of the badge that sits neatly on the white shirt, which itself features subtle red and blue detailing. The result is a cleaner, sportier look – though one that drifts further from the historic lions of Richard the Lionheart and closer to a contemporary, made-for-TV emblem.

Compare this to the Dutch – because they know how to do this properly. Their flag is red, white and blue, yet their fans don’t turn up looking like a patriotic patchwork quilt. They wear orange. All of them. One colour, one identity, one giant, blinding traffic cone of national pride.

England? We still can’t decide. Some wear red, some wear white, some look like they’re on their way to a royal wedding by mistake. Even after lifting the trophy, our supporters looked like they were celebrating three different events entirely and had somehow ended up in the same stadium by accident.

If England wants to look as organised as they now play, we need to do what the Dutch did centuries ago – pick one colour and stick to it. Otherwise, every England victory will continue to look like it was brought to you by a crowd dressed for the wrong party.

Yet, oddly enough, the House of Orange started out as French.

The name comes from the Principality of Orange, a tiny patch of land in Provence, in the south of France. Back in medieval times, it wasn’t about the fruit – the town of Orange existed long before oranges were even widely known in Europe. It was originally a feudal lordship, then a principality, and it passed through various noble hands until the title “Prince of Orange” eventually ended up with the House of Nassau in the Netherlands in the 16th century.

That’s how Dutch royalty ended up calling themselves the House of Orange, despite the fact the place was French, the name wasn’t about the colour, and the fruit came into the story much later. Over time, “Orange” became the national colour of the Netherlands – even though it technically comes from a French toponym, not a crate of fruit.

So the Dutch sea of orange at football matches is, in a roundabout way, a tribute to a medieval French principality. Very Dutch – adopting something foreign and making it more iconic than the original.